Inuit Traditional Clothing and Kamiits

One of the main traditions is that the woman makes the cloth. The Inuit clothes consist of parkas such as: an outer layer, inner parkas, a trousers, mittens, caribou or rabbit socks and kamiits. Inuit makes clothes from animal skins, sewn together using needles made from animals bones and threads. Parkas are made with leather and fur. Some of the animals used to make the clothes are:

caribou

seal

squirrel

wolf

wolverine

mink

bears

foxes

Inuit woman wore parkas with extra large hoods, to allow the mother to carry a baby against their back and to protect it from the harsh wind. The styles of parkas vary from region to region , from shape of hood to length of the tails. Today parkas are still worn in other parts of the world and are made in other materials.

The woman also makes kamiits. Kamiits are waterproof boats. The boats are made of sealskins. They are very useful in the spring when the snow melts.

How Do They Prepare The Skins?

Parkas and kamiits is a long job to do. Inuit woman prepare the skins using a scraper called an ulu. The scraper removes the fat from the skins , after the woman chews the skin to soften it, Through the years the woman loses their teeth.

The Inuit still wear traditional clothes,such as parkas and kamiits in the far north. They also wear clothes like pants and shirts from the south.

References: Leblanc , Genevieve and Sarrasin, Louise. Place In Time (2007)

4 responses to “Inuit Traditional Clothing and Kamiits”

I remember when I was 12 years old (back in the early sixties) I was fascinated when I first learned about how the Inuit of the North would fashion needles out of bone in order to sew the skins. Aboriginal populations everywhere have devised amazing technologies but the Inuit particularly impress me because they live in some of the most hostile habitats.
Thank you for writing about this.
Mrs. Theriault

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